(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
WriteOn! Authenticity [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']
Date: 2022-07-21
Object in the mirror may be other than it appears...
What readers say they want...
..is often different than what they actually want.
Readers want to be immersed in what they’re reading. In order to do so, we as writers must present characters that are compelling, internal logic that is consistent, and a world that feels real. This is as true of a memoir as of science fiction, as critical to horror as to an educational romp for children. Ok, perhaps it’s less so for that investigation of how laughable the Laffer Curve really is, but outside of academic essays or some textbooks, the gist holds true.
Readers want to be engaged, and writers want to engage readers.
So how?
It’s easy to say ‘make good characters, show a world that has logic, and something that feels real’, but what does that mean, exactly?
Write what you know, leave out unnecessary words, and don't do it to be famous. - Ernest Hemmingway
It sounds great on the surface and infallible. If I write what I know, it will be accurate and realistic, right?
Wrong.
Who wants to read about a 40-yr old military member with three cats, two young kids, and no idea what she’ll do when I leave the military?
Who wants to read about yet another early-20s adult who’s just realized that their major isn’t going to lead automatically to a professional and fulfilling career that will also let them eat something besides ramen, and who’s trying to figure out how to explain his boyfriend to his Tennessee parents?
More, if we only write about what we, personally, know, then what about our dreams for the future?
Perhaps what Hemmingway was saying is too stripped to the bone for us Internet Writers to get. Maybe, just maybe, he’s talking about the human condition.
Okay. There’s more we can do with that. We can write about dreams deferred, dreams broken, dreams rising from the ashes. We can write about the perfect imperfection of a partner of decades, or that awesome and terrifying moment that we realize our words or actions have touched and changed someone’s life. The courage of saying our truth even though the reactions are as bad as we feared, because we did it. Heartbreak. The utter solitude of being in a crowd. Childbirth. Breaking a rib because no, we weren’t ready to climb that tree, not yet, but we tried anyway.
Maybe we can do this in a memoir, and we can certainly do this in speculative fiction. The human condition is both universal and unique in beautiful, fascinating ways.
But NoBlinkers, that doesn’t help me.
Yes, that only goes so far. I have never flown, but that doesn’t mean my characters have to be chained to the earth. I haven’t lost a parent or a child. BUT we can come close, and we can talk to each other, and with empathy, we can create characters who have experienced these things in a way that they still reach out and touch the hearts of our readers. Somehow.
And that’s where I say Hemmingway doesn’t go far enough. Imaginations are our greatest gift, and sometimes wikipedia comes in as a close second.
A World That Makes Sense
The next step, of creating a world that acts on its own logic and feels real is another step. In fact, it’s two.
Most people want to read about places and situations that have a logic to them, even when the real world doesn’t. In fact, I think we’re MORE drawn to worlds that make sense when everything is warping around us. So we have to, as writers, make the rules of the world clear, and show where and how we follow those rules…
AND how characters subvert them, twist the rules, and push beyond them.
This is as true of Hidden Figures as it is of The Martian (yes, I like science and space), or of Tremors or Coco. In this case I’m using movies (and books), but the form is immaterial. Rules must be seen. The world must work similarly to our own, or it must be clear in some fashion (without paragraphs of exposition or ‘as you know, Bob’ moments) how it differs.
For memoirs and histories, we can research. For fantasy and science fiction? We can research. There are thousands of cultures to draw on and millenia of history at our fingertips. Humanity has worked to explore the stars long before Sputnik changed the world, and when I think of what we knew and what we know we don’t know, I’m humbled.
After all of our research, we have to decide what to show on the page. And this is where things get difficult.
Most readers don’t want authenticity.
They say they do, but what reader really wants to wade through pages upon pages of how flax was beaten into cloth, or wool was spun, or the in-depth description of every class of person and every hour of their day?
Very, very few.
What readers want is the sense of authenticity.
This is a writer’s salvation. Those of us who write speculative fiction don’t need to develop different languages with different cultural underpinnings, or a full climatological model of our made-up world. We don’t have to write the thousand and a half years of history, or the details of just how spaceships skip between galaxies. Readers don’t want or need that. They want enough that it feels authentic, that there’s a sense of reality.
SenShoe’s advice from long before I joined this community holds true here. Engaging a reader’s senses (more than just visual) will help immerse them in the world. I spoke about the swamp of Tomawog last week — I don’t have to list every species of tree or grass, the seventeen different bugs that all think the Callow Youth tastes fantastic (and the four that don’t). I can talk about the fertile scent of decay that hung around Cal and Stou, gluing itself to them with every humid breath they took until they were certain moss was growing in their lungs. I can mention the heavy mud that pulls at their boots, the plorp of what Stou hoped was just a frog off to the right, barely audible through the hum of insects and bickering birdsong.
However, there’s a dark side to this reader want. It’s one we’ve seen in politics, much to our sorrow. Readers want what they believe is true more than what is true.
The Middle Ages weren’t perfect, but people who lived through their teens usually lived into their 70s, especially if they weren’t nobles poisoning themselves by their clothing (arsenic is great for fixing green, but terrible for fixing insides — and it’s something you can absorb through the skin). People regularly washed, and rarely married before their late teens (except for nobles who’d get betrothed much younger, but the age of majority was if anything OLDER for them). Women owned businesses (if their spouse had passed), property, and could be as literate as the men. However, if I were to include this in my fantasy novel?
UNREALISTIC! Misandrist! Social Justice Warrior!
People believe the myth of the Middle Ages, one begun by self-identified ‘Enlightenment’ scholars. In order to claim enlightenment, they had to make the previous era dark. And so they did. Women were married at 13 and mothers by 14. They were illiterate and had no rights. NO ONE BATHED. They died in their forties. Look how much better we are now.
Lies. All lies — or complete misunderstandings. Yet that mythos of the Middle Ages — or Dark Ages, is what survives and what is seen as the backbone of fantasy.
Breaking a reader’s expectations with the truth is subversive. It’s creative, it’s brave, and it requires skill. It doesn’t matter if it’s the myth of people in 1300 refusing to clean themselves, or if it’s the myth of JFK’s Camelot, or if it’s the myth of Baba Yaga. People believe they already know what the world is like. Showing them a world other than that must be done with care, so their expectations are never directly countered, but eased around.
Readers want the sense of authenticity, usually more than authenticity.
Writers want to translate what we know into new stories, new characters, new worlds to be discovered — in our past, future, or another dimension entirely.
In the end, what is ‘real’ for our work depends entirely upon an unspoken agreement between the writer and the reader to create it together and believe.
Tonight’s Challenge!
Pick one thing you know that is counter to what common knowledge sees it as. Write it so it still seems authentic.
Happy writing!
READERS & BOOK LOVERS SERIES SCHEDULE
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/21/2111567/-WriteOn-Authenticity
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
